Best of Free PCB Design Software

Do you need a free PCB design software or tool to put in practice the new electronic project you’ve just designed? So, we present you 10 of the best PCB software tools available on the internet that will help you to develop your printed circuit board faster and with ease. See the list under these ads.

1 ∴ ZenitPCB
Is an excellent pcb layout design software tool to create professional printed circuit board ( PCB ). It is a flexible easy to use CAD program, which allow you to realize your projects in a short time. With ZenitPCB Layout is possible to create the project starting both from the schematic capture or by the layout itself.

2 ∴ FreePCB
Is a free, open-source PCB design editor for Microsoft Windows. It was designed to be easy to learn and easy to use, yet capable of professional-quality work. Some of its features are: 1 to 16 copper layers, board size up to 60 inches by 60 inches, imports and exports PADS-PCB netlists and more

3 ∴ TinyCAD
Is a program to help you draw circuit diagrams. It comes complete with symbol libraries to get you started straight away. As well as being able to simply print your designs, you can use TinyCAD to publish your drawings by copying and pasting into a Word document or saving as a PNG bitmap for the web.

4 ∴ Osmond PCB
Is a flexible tool for designing printed circuit boards. It runs on Macintosh. Its many features include: virtually unlimited board sizes, number of board layers, number of parts, support for both through-hole and surface mount parts and more.

5 ∴ BSch3V
Is a schematic capture program for Windows. The name “BSch” is an abbreviation of “Basic Schematic”. It has only basic functions, in order to simplify operation.

6 ∴ ExpressPCB
Is a snap to learn and use. Laying out PCBs is easy, even for the first time user.

7 ∴ Kicad
Is an open source (GPL) software for the creation of electronic schematic diagrams and printed circuit board artwork. It is useful for everybody working in electronic design (schematic diagrams and Printed Board up to 16 layers).

9 ∴ Fritzing
Fritzing software is an interesting open-source initiative to support designers, artists, researchers and hobbyists to work creatively with interactive electronics and develop electronic projects. Fritzing helps you learn more about electronic circuits, to document your projects and even let’s you prepare them for production.

10 ∴ DesignSpark PCB
DesignSpark PCB is the world’s most accessible electronics design software. Easy to easy to learn and easy to use, it is designed to significantly reduce your concept-to-production time. At the core of this unique approach is a powerful software engine that enables you to capture Schematics, design PCB boards and layouts.

Designspark PCB: Requires a registration which is free but it’s bug-ridden and last time I used, didn’t work. Support couldn’t solve it. Later I realised it required constant connection to the net with cookies enabled. I believe it is a spyware.

Fritzing is a toy.

Kickad I found to be full of bugs to the extent of uselessness. I deleted it when I found myself fighting the software rather than designing a PCB.

FreePCB wasn’t maintained for the last three years – since 2011. This tells the story.

TinyCad is what the name says: tiny. The library is extremely limited. For example there are only 11 microcontrollers.

ExpressPCB is anything but express. Very difficult to use it. If you re-position a part, you have to re-align every-single-connection going to it. This means, every corner of every lines. This is perhaps the most cumbersome to use among all of these. Badly limited library.

Sadly, all of these are totally useless but for the most simple, few-pads jobs. But then one could just get a piece of vero-board.
Most of these require one to create custom components almost for everything.
Might as well use inkscape … lot easier to make that few small boards.

That’s absolutely true. Either these free design software are full of bugs or tie you into buying boards at higher prices by not allowing you to export gerber data files that is a standard for pcb design, if you want a choose your on pcb maker.

The best for me in PCB design is Eagle Cadsoft, but there is not simulation & too much libraries. Circuit Wizard is very intuitive to check simple problems in simulation. Proteus is excellent. I like WinQcad of MicroCad, but not so practical as Circuit Wizard, PCB Wizard & Live wire. Multisim is very good. I´ve never used Altium Designer. I think that each one of us have to start walking the first step trying at less one of these PCB software and then we will know with wich one of them we fell ok according our requeriments.

I am working with Altium Designer 14 and find myself hating it. If you decide (for very good reasons) to use the metric system instead of that damn idiotic imperial system from the days of the Roman Empire, you are in hell with this software.

In Altium, push the “Q” key to switch between Metric and Imperial. It really is that easy.

Every cad piece of software has issues. None of them are going to be everything you want. You are not the only cad person out there to use the tools and have ideas and suggestions on how to best make these tools. Why do you think there are so many small free cad tools. Lots of people want to make the software do what and how they want. Maybe someday, someone (maybe you) will come up with a very good tool that everyone stands behind. Until then, I wish you luck in finding / creating the cad software that fits your style.

It sounds to me that you are not fimilar with measurement systems, and do not know how to convert metric to imperial and vice versa. learn to convert measurements before you condem this software, or better still design your own pcb design software

Well it is all rubbish really I have only found Target that works for me the rest of the so called free stuff is a wast of time I have used http://ibfriedrich.com/ and that is very good and free if you are not using it to make commercial products if you are then 49 dollars for 400 pins. has anyone tried any of the pcb software on line like EASYEDA or UPVERTER both look good and are free but you are on line all the time.

Upverter.com is really good. It’s simple and easy to use but is able to design complex boards. The best part is that you can use it from anywhere on any OS since it runs in the browser. So you need to be online to use it but I’m online 99% of the time anyways…I’m rarely working on a plane or something. It’s free for open source designs and I think it’s pretty cheap for private designs too.

DesignSpark is pretty horrible. The library structure is unfathomable and it’s difficult to construct your own completely independent of the RS agenda of directing you toward their own products. That would be fine if all RS components were modelled but most (that I need) aren’t. There are extensive tutorials but intuitive apps don’t require tutorials. It’s not intuitive, plus the talk-over is a ghastly estuary accent which grates – ‘model’ for instance pronounced ‘modo-oww’, aghhhh. The help files don’t match the program and it’s difficult or impossible to track down what many of the click boxes mean. And it’s flaky, frequent crashes.
Problem is, in the UK there isn’t a lot of choice and we don’t have the convenience of progs linked to manufacturers. So if we want an export, DesignSpark is about the best (or least bad) there is. The alternative is to fork out on a decent package.

Thanks Drew for letting me know about how rubbish DesignSpark is.
I downloaded the app and ran it. I was then asked to register and that’s where the trouble started.There were numerous problems to many to explain. So now I know it’s not worth bothering. Thanks again Drew.

Hi Jim, just picked up your reply. One trouble with DesignSpark is RS tell you how wonderful it is and what a great favour they are bestowing upon punters. So when people get into a fankle with it they are inclined to blame themselves and think they are being stooopid or thick. Well I can assure all frustrated users that they are not to blame, it is the most deplorable piece of **** I’ve ever encountered. Never have I sworn so vigorously at a prog, indeed I’ve smashed my desk banging fists against it. Pages could be filled defining the faults, suffice to say it doesn’t do *anything* properly, spend all ones time doing work-arounds. The latest version I cannot even get to load and the designers are incapable of fixing it. Incompetence personified. Unfortunately there is a dearth of decent free pcb software, even many of the paid for ones are dire. I’ll keep using it ‘cos my will is greater than its wilfulness and I can’t justify the £wads for a professional package. All we can do is complain to RS, that’ll make a big difference. Just like my incessant complaining about their atrocious web site. Civilisation is doomed.

I have tried pcb web this is now a download to your computer the database is Digi Key so not to bad the download is free to your desktop and will generate free Gerber files so you can go anywhere for boards.

What do you all recommend for designing flexible printed circuits (flex) instead?
I need to design a flex with some contacts on it and don’t know which program is good at it. I am trying eagle but is more pcb oriented. Any suggestion is appreciated.